design thinking thinking — are you thinking what I’m thinking?
A curated collection of thoughts on Design Thinking.
Have you read the essay On Design Thinking by Maggie Gram? It isn’t the usual ‘preaching to the choir’ post. It’s a fresh, detailed piece covering part-history, part-case study, part-opinion on Design Thinking. I immediately shared it with the aim to burst some filter bubbles – my post ended up trending on LinkedIn.
I want to check in with the industry. This is not a history lesson (You can read Maggie’s piece for that) but a collection of opinions, quotes, comments, articles and toolboxes around Design Thinking. Gathered together to spark conversation, argument, and alignment.
Comments on ‘On Design Thinking by Maggie Gram’ from my LinkedIn post
“Great piece on the promise and frequent shortcomings of service design & design thinking.”
Rasmus Sundqvist, Vice VD & partner, Point AB
“Thank you for sharing this, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is well-written, consistent, meaningful, well-documented, valuable. And it took me on a historical trip I haven’t taken before, one which enlarged my perspective and deepened my understanding of the current design industry space.”
Ioana Adriana Teleanu, UX Manager la UiPath | UX Goodies on Instagram (over 130K followers) 🌟
“Thanks for sharing Jenny, great read with connecting threads, and intriguing case study. Hopefully Gainesville can learn from the experiences and rise above to put practices in place for entire communities!”
Vassoula Vasiliou, Creative Partner at Group of Humans | www
“Come for the critique in Design Thinking … Stay for the awesome design history.
I think the article had an opportunity to move from “Design Thinking” to “design thinking” and missed its chance. So instead of illuminating us on what makes design, design as promised in the beginning it is more a take down piece on the corporatization of design, and just the dangers of avoiding change management when trying to do new things in old spaces.”
Dave Malouf, Design Operations Leader. Speaker. Educator.
Comments on ‘Design Thinking’ in general from that same LinkedIn post
“Design thinking is sometimes used as a band-aid to a bigger organisational problem. Just like agile and lean, design thinking can be considered the snake oil off our time. The one solution to everything.
Yet design thinking is a good way to introduce people to the design process. But this often just scratches the surface. All the more reason we should be clear that design thinking is not the goal itself. That work with a long term impact isn’t done in a 2 week sprint. But rather that sprints are another tool to use.
Real impact is possible if we understand who we’re designing for and with. If we create a safe space where all perspectives are welcome. We first need to address our own working culture, to see what works for our team and how to best serve the people we design for.”
Jorik Elferink, author of The Empathy Game, and Curator at Toolbox Toolbox
“Design thinking can be one of many tools to spark conversation. But building diverse solutions, relations of trust and inclusive climates takes continuous work, risk and mind parkour, and an ability to see the systems in which your specific challenge lives. There are no shortcuts in life, nor any model that fits all, unless you are a very privileged person or a dictator. Building cities and organisations is a different level than prototyping tech in the Valley.”
Idun Isdrake, CEO & Exec Creative Director at Playcentric Studios
Stop Design Thinking
After the initial reactions, which were pretty varied and interesting, I caught up with the the outspoken Stop Design Thinking gang about the topic in general. They summarised their Stop Design Thinking thinking in 3 bullets.
1. Design Thinking is reductive.
As the realities of Design practice collide with Design Thinking, many have tied themselves in knots, adding more hexagons, more feedback loops and more layers to this five step program (to the point of absurdity). It’s typical to simplify messy and complicated processes for the purpose of education and communication by creating models, but these models typically don’t run well in reverse, as the complexities hidden during simplification reappear.
Given the genesis of this approach, it’s perhaps no coincidence that these five phases closely mirror the simplified ‘phase billing’ techniques employed by Design consultancies.
2. Design Thinking diminishes the value of Design
In parallel to Design Thinking, with it’s gross simplifications, it’s playful Lego ideation sessions and it’s jovial warm-up exercises don’t elevate Design as a profession within organizations, rather it serves to further affirm the impression of Design as an adolescent past-time from which it has been attempting to escape for decades.
If Design Thinking were simply a misguided effort by a group of Designers to spread the gospel of Design, then we might shrug these indiscretions off, but it’s not. As Design Thinking offers up such a neatly packaged, curriculum-friendly study topic, it has spread through universities, colleges, business training institutes, even the Girl Scouts, and as a result it’s increasingly taught by people with no formal Design experience or training. This further drives a simplistic attitude to Design, and serves to further obfuscate the complexities and detail required in any ‘real’ Design project, further diminishing the professional nature of the discipline.
Only by elevating Designers themselves and allowing them to lead innovation, product and strategy discussions will we fully expose the abilities and technical leadership that good Design can have.
3. Design Thinking fetishizes solutionism
Design work doesn’t even stop once a product ships. Like ‘Agile’, or ‘Scrum’ or any other product development tool, Design Thinking offers some basic organizational logic to a project, but implies a level of closure which isn’t present in reality.
Good Designers have spent decades developing techniques not only to develop what ‘could’ be made — (to a high quality, embracing best practices, material understanding, procedural and policy adherence), but in helping explore whether something ‘should’ be made. Speculative practices; the exploration and expression of externalities; the rendering of implications over applications; these all form part of a contemporary Designer’s arsenal, yet aren’t represented anywhere within Design Thinking literature.
For more, follow them on @0DesignThinking and have a chat!
What about Design Thinking and data?
“User data is user-centrism — and it doesn’t bite
One of the biggest problems in the design community is its impermeability to different sources of knowledge. Surveys and forms are practiced since the 30s, ethnographic interviews are practiced since the 60s-70s. They have their value. These methodologies are often used to answer questions they simply cannot answer. What’s new?
Computational analytics, search engine data, and the enormously rich footprints that every user leaves behind when using digital services. I had to leave two companies — both with enormous potential — because design and data teams would not integrate.”
Sérgio Tavares, PhD, Design, Data & Humans — Senior Service Designer at Idean
What about the bridge between academia and real life?
I have personally spent the past six years programming and running Design Thinking courses and projects at undergraduate and postgraduate level. My part-time MA students at Hyper Island got the opportunity to deep-dive into the area , followed by applying learnings to their workplace. I asked a couple of my former Hyper Island colleague and students how it’s been since, as well as others who have studied and applied Design Thinking at postgraduate level…
“We run a project at Hyper Island on the Masters called Design Thinking, and each year my head rings with the thought ‘Design Thinking is Dead… Long live Design Thinking’. When packaged up neatly into little hexagons, double diamonds or other easy to digest steps it seems simple, it fools students and practitioners alike into thinking they can hop across the stages with relative ease and “Hey! We’re here with a lovely solution to world hunger!”
Here lies my problem, design is messy, the team needs diversity and not to disappear into a haze of homophily. It’s about ripping the plaster off and opening up the wound to see what the actual root cause is, and not simply trying to cover it up again with candy coloured post-its. It’s about admitting you cannot go any further, that the root is systemic; it’s about understanding not just the design, but the business case, the tech, the team, it’s about saying follow the f**king money, because these things do not fund themselves.
Because pretty ideas are not going to save us. Design Thinking is AMAZING, but what the hell is it? My favourite moment with the Masters students is the moment they stop swallowing the Design thinking pill, realise its more than tools, models and methods and start to really critically approach it with fresh eyes….”
Tash Willcocks, Director of Masters Europe, Hyper Island
“What gives me huge pause is this idea that we can ‘trust the process.’ I love and need frameworks, but if we trust processes too much, we end up losing our ability to critically engage with our own work. So many of our methods are rooted in social sciences that are themselves rooted in colonialist projects. The language of ‘improvement’ can start to creep in and we can end up focusing on changing other people’s behavior (without asking them) or trying to design over political problems. I think we need to combine design thinking with a deep awareness of where we’re situated in power structures, and make sure we’re not confusing political needs with design opportunities.
My first PhD attempt was about how people used mapmaking and spatial planning to ‘civilize’ and ‘improve’ populations. It’s interesting when you see the different ways people undermine power structures and push back against colonialism. I didn’t want to focus on ‘success’ or ‘failure’ but on how this large-scale attempt to redesign the entire landscape of Ireland transformed it in all these different ways, even where it didn’t leave obvious material traces.”
Jane Ruffino, Co-founder and Content Design Lead at Character; Doktorand at Södertörn University
“We have managed to increase team performance and develop concepts that have lead to solving user need and reaching important strategic aims. The Design Thinking approach demands a team lead that can navigate the team to find the sweet spot intersecting identified user needs, key organizational objectives and a good market fit. As any method it has its strengths and weaknesses. Try and discover what it can do for you compared to the rest of your mixed methodology approach. But what ever you do, never build everything you do on only one approach…”
Zoran Matic, Innovation Manager at UR (The Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company). Hyper Island MA Alumni
“I have been a consultant in the area of B2B communication and business development in soon 30 years and used a lot of methods and workshop tools without knowing that my work one day would be called Design Thinking. But no, I don’t think that DT is “the emperor’s new clothes”. On the contrary, DT offers companies a solution for how to adapt to a difficult-to-interpret future by merging knowledge in the areas of business, technology, and human behavior. The main benefit DT has brought to the world is that it has forced cold-tempered businessmen and over-rational engineers to realize that the only way to reach success is to dance close with their customers all the way into the future.”
Tomas Falk, Change Leader & Coach, Hyper Island MA Alumni
If this was an article article, here are some articles…
Amy Smith: The Most Complete Design Thinking Tools & Resource Collections
Maggie Gram: On Design Thinking
McKinsey: Are you asking enough from your design leaders?
Report: The Gainesville Question Report
(via Alexander Hedlund)
Natasha Jen: Design Thinking is Bullsh*t
Yasushi Kusume: What makes a knowledgeable, talented, and skilled designer?
Fortune: The coronavirus problem could be solved with design thinking
Forbes: Needed: A More Expansive View Of Design Thinking
Harvard Business Review: Design Thinking Is Fundamentally Conservative and Preserves the Status Quo
Fast Company: Design Thinking Needs To Think Bigger.
Model: The Revamped Double Diamond by Dan Nessler
Model: The Definite Tool Set for Product Development
Design Thinking; there’s a toolbox for that.
d. School: Tools for taking action
IBM Design Thinking Field Guide
Design Thinking: Business Innovation
Telekom Design — Design Thinking Doing
Design Thinking for Communications Professionals
More on www.toolboxtoolbox.com
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Jenny Theolin
Founder Toolbox Toolbox
A curated list of the best business, design, and organisational change toolboxes built by some of the most influential companies, institutions and thinkers.
Founder Studio Theolin Consulting AB
Experienced designer and educator creating events and learning experiences for individuals, schools and businesses within areas such as technology, design thinking, communication, innovation, culture and entrepreneurship.
Programme Director, Digital Design & Strategy, Berghs School of Communication
Design Education Human, Group of Humans
